We already discussed this in a PM, Goody, but in order to possibly help other people I paste some of the stuff from my PM in this thread.
I have looked around a bit on Google for any pages in Japanese or anything about any mods on JVC XA-HD 500, but I have not found anything. I also looked a bit for info about CF cards and true IDE mode.
I found this old thread from 2007 on a forum.
There is some interesting stuff there.
In the first post a member writes "
Typically most Compact Flash has a True IDE Mode and a removable drive mode and auto switch between the mode depending on the socket."
Well, perhaps only that post was interesting for you... They discuss SanDisk Extreme CF cards. I have read somewhere that SanDisk Extreme can do true IDE without problems.
So perhaps you could start with trying a cheap Kingston Elite Pro X133 CF card. The lowest capacity should be enough to test if it works. I think a 2GB card might cost up to £15. It might be best to try out with that one so that you do not spend a lot of money on a 32GB card that does not work...
If the Kingston does not work, perhaps the lowest capacity of SanDisk Extreme might work. But SanDisk Extreme CF cards are more expensive than Kingston but I think they only go up to 8GB. I think that Kingston Elite Pro are the best then it comes to combining low price and good quality.
I found an interesting page here. It shows how to put a CF card into an iPod Mini. The interesting thing is that the iPod Mini had a microdrive. So in your case it should be the same as in this article.
Getting into the JVC is different, and I have no idea of how it looks like inside. On the iPod Mini, it seems easy to get access to the microdrive. Hopefully, it will not be difficult on the JVC.
I found some interesting stuff for the XA-HD500
Here is an online quick start in English.
Here is the Japanese manual. On pages 26 & 27 it is shown how to open the player for replacing the battery. That is good since you can see what to do to open it.
I do not understand everything in the instruction, but basically it describes what steps to take to open the player. The images clearly show what to do, so knowledge in Japanese is not necessary.
1. First you have to turn off the battery by pressing the play/stop button. (it says something like "keep pressing" the button). Can you turn only the battery off? On my Kenwood, there is a switch that turns the battery off. When the battery is off, the player will not start even if I press the start button. So the battery have to be turned off before the player is opened.
2. Remove the screws as on the image.
3. Pull the front cover up from the bottom as shown on the image
4. The control pad is connected as shown on the image, you need to unplug its connector.
5. The white arrows show four spots where you need to press with your fingers and softly "rock" the motherbord so that it comes loose from the back cover.
6 and 7. After that you can turn the motherboard over and get access to the battery. The only thing I wonder is - where is the microdrive?!?!
It might be the square thing next to the battery. It looks like some sort of dampening material is used on the sides of it as is custom on HDD:s inside portable music players to protect them from shocks. Compare it with the iPod Mini.
It seems that in order to update firmware you need a special software updater that is on the CD that you get with the JVC XA-HD500.
Here is an online instruction on how to update firmware.
Apparently you cannot update firmware without that installation CD that comes with the JVC.
It might be possible to find that updater software on the internet, but my quick search revealed nothing.